Given two arbitrary constants, \(\alpha_1\) and \(\alpha_2\), and two arbitrary images \(f_1\left(x,y\right)\) and \(f_2\left(x,y\right)\), \(\varkappa\) is said to be a linear operator if:
\[ \begin{equation}\begin{split} \varkappa\left[\alpha_1 f_1\left(x,y\right) + \alpha_2 f_2\left(x,y\right)\right] & = \alpha_1 \varkappa\left[ f_1\left(x,y\right)\right] + \alpha_2 \varkappa\left[f_2\left(x,y\right)\right] \\ & = \alpha_1 g_1\left(x,y\right) + \alpha_2 g_2\left(x,y\right) \end{split}\end{equation} \]